Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Skinprint mods are strictly against Cusk Academy code. That was actually a recent development; as the cold war escalated and Dimokratía kept emphasizing how pure and healthy their cadets were, word came down from Fédération that we couldn’t get any more skinprints, piercings, fragrance implants, none of it. They yanked those of us who had them out of bed in the middle of the night to get our bodies purified.

So obviously the first place I head while I wait for the Heartspeak Boys concert are the modification stalls. I’m now quite buzzed on PepsiRum, so I don’t take long deliberating. I don’t deliberate at all, in fact—I just pick the most expensive artist and tell them to go at it. Flashing Minerva’s onyx card gets me suite access, so rather than milling around with the hoi polloi I settle into my private lounge and wait for the artist to arrive with their tools. I order another PepsiRum in the meantime.

The skinprint process is delightful. The room shifts to a steamy mineral bath surrounded by snow as I strip, and the artist spritzes me up and down with gold and brass and silver. After they wipe away the excess, what’s left are metallic tendrils and leaves: a burst on either cheek, then another set starting on my neck and spreading over my chest and back, the front vines stopping at my hip bones and the back ones cascading all the way down to mid-thigh. I get them to scribe a tattoo I’ve been wanting for months: Labels are the Root of Violence , in five-year black, reading vertically between my pectorals.

Then the dresser comes in. She’s picked me out a cream-colored wrap and a gold circlet. She also brought a laurel cuff for my upper arm, but I turn that down. A little too Greco-Roman cliché—though I must say that I am quite pleased with the circlet and wrap. My skin is hypersensitive from the skinprint mods, so the silky fabric feels like a dozen hands are caressing me at once. The only word you can read above the top of the wrap is Violence .

“I love this,” I tell her. “Devon Mujaba couldn’t possibly resist.”

She gives me a long-lashed wink. “You saw the concert on the schedule? It must be a surprise for the lucky fifteen-year-old. None of us had any notice.”

Once she’s finished grooming my hair, I head out into the bustling club. Bass pounds loud enough to vibrate my organs. My skinprints glow in the low light, and between that and my makeup, hairstyle, and outfit, I enter the dancing throng as something superhuman. This is the opposite of trying to hide myself away, but I don’t care anymore. A sea of hungry eyes is just the distraction that I need. Even if I’m worthless, even if I’m just a tool to be disposed of, useless to family or country, even if the only person who actually loved me is well and truly dead, I have this power to attract and compel. At least that’s still mine.

I whirl through the dance floor, pushing into the thickest clots of dancers, losing myself in the press of bodies. I’m covered in other people’s sweat, and my muscles are loose from the vibration of the bass, when I see a dancer check the time on her bracelet over by the bar: 17:09. Showtime.

I work my way to the satellite’s other club, where the Heartspeak Boys will be performing. I don’t have an invite, but I don’t need one. The onyx card gets me into a special cordoned-off area in the front. I catch my breath on a spacious couch as everyone behind me is packed into standing room. With my robe and body decorations, I feel like the boys are performing just for me. Like I’m an emperor. I mean, I’m wearing a fucking circlet.

They’re emoting to the rafters, wearing their loose loopy blouses, holding their hands to their chests as they sing. The Heartspeak Boys are ridiculous. Only one of them is actually a boy, for starters. The crowd loves all of it. So do I.

Devon Mujaba—not that that’s his real name, I’m sure—is in the center. He’s the smallest of the three, and he’s simply perfection. All the right proportions, his dark brown hair almost the same color as his skin, cascading over his head in a wave that never breaks, over eyes a gorgeous chemical green. His singing voice is startlingly pure. Tonight he, too, is a creature that’s more than human.

Even with the glare of the stage lights, Devon must notice me, an island in this mass of pressed people. I’m alone, lounging on this dais with my fresh skinprints, robe open to my waist, beaming all my focus at him. Making sure he can’t miss me.

I appear to have succeeded. As the Heartspeak Boys receive their applause, they hurl gladiolas to the lucky birthday girl, placing hands over their hearts as they bow and curtsy. She nearly passes out; it’s adorable. When Devon Mujaba does his final curtsy, it’s me he looks at. Full-on, zero-percent-accidental, hungry-animal eye contact.

I tilt my head toward the exit, where elevators whisk people to their bedrooms. Where, on the top floor, my Cusk Suite is waiting.

Devon nods back, so imperceptibly that it’s possible none of his thousand other fans noticed. That fact, that we’ve just communicated privately in a crowded hall, sets my pulse racing.

I push my way through the crowd, jostling a trio of girls who turn to complain at me but then go blank with shock when they see who I am. I try to speed away, but more and more people around us catch on to who’s among them. “Why aren’t you in Mari, Ambrose Cusk?” someone shouts.

I hurry to the onyx elevator, but the crowd is too thick for me to get there fast. These are not conversations I would want to have in the best of times. But especially not tonight. I’m hoping to avoid the whole world tonight. Except for Devon Mujaba.

I knock over a sign advertising moon tours, apologize to the startled travel agent. Before she can answer I’ve begun to run, shoving through the crowd, bunching my robe in my fist so I won’t trip, kicking off my sandals and abandoning them, taking the onyx stairs because they’re closer and so that I can feel the burn in my muscles, stair stair stair stair, thump thump thump thump, bare feet on no-skid graphite, turn the corner, stair stair stair stair, thump thump thump thump, all the way up to my suite, twenty stories above the mob.

Then the penthouse door clicks open and I’m inside. I press my back against the wall, chest heaving. By the time I’ve caught my breath I’m slumped to the ground. I almost cry, because I’m a melodramatic drunk whose sister is dead, but instead I crawl across the carpet. Hands shaking, I fix myself a fresh PepsiRum, stagger to my feet, miraculously without spilling the drink, and hump over to the three-story windows. I can’t see the Endeavor , hidden away in its launch hangar. Mercifully. All the same I know it’s near. I cool my cheek against the window and then I’m naked, pressing my whole body against the glass, imagining what it would be like if my cells found a way to pass through, if I tumbled through this clear surface into the open atmosphere, and then the ground far below. I tap my head against the glass, my gold circlet—the only adornment I still have on—ringing out brightly. I’m ludicrous. I’m a simply ludicrous human.

I lie down naked on the rug, on my back, my cocktail centered on my torso, and let myself feel sorry for myself. That’s an emotion I can feel very purely and deeply. My wallowing is usually over quickly, but this time—who knows? Could be permanent.

Maybe I should eat something. But before I can muster the strength to activate my bracelet and place an order, I hear the descending chimes of the suite’s doorbell. Like we’re in the twentieth century. It’s a retro affectation that I selected in the suite preferences.

I slap the tears away from my eyes, dash to the bathroom to fix myself in the mirror. “There in a minute!”

Clothes. I should wear clothes. At least to start with.

I put a bathrobe on, arrange it across my shoulders and tie it at my waist with a length of silk rope I find in the stocked walk-in closet. Then I go to the door and drag my fingers across, to turn the material transparent. I’d been assuming it was Devon Mujaba, of course, but now—way too late—I consider who else it might be. My mother, Sri, my assistant or a professor, that sweet-faced girl whose quincea?era I just upstaged, any of them could have come to chew me out. As the door turns cloudy and then clear as glass, I feel simultaneous relief and excitement.

It is Devon Mujaba.